Or the little Seasonal Event that’s going on in the World of Warcraft this week.

How do you get your own, you are wondering?

Or the +AP, or +Healing, or +Spell Damage and Healing rings? (All epics.)

Or the brooms for that matter, from ones that level 40 characters can ride, all the way to the epic flying mount brooms.

Kill the Headless Horseman.

Well, to start, you’ll need to be level 69 or so. 70 probably.

Then you need to go to the Scarlet Monastery, and visit the Graveyard. (By now you have the Scarlet Monastery key, but if you don’t, no worries, the graveyard isn’t behind a locked door.) It’s the portal entrance on the left hand side inside the entry way.

(I do feel pretty sorry for the Alliance on PvP servers. Reaching this place must just be dumb at the moment. On my server, RP, there are huge numbers of Alliance, but they outnumber us like 10 to 1 or something crazy. However, they’re all harmless.)

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the point.

Five friends to take out the Horseman.

You’ll want a Tank. The Horseman hits fairly hard. If you aren’t a tank, at least use your shield.

You’ll need a healer. An Elemental Shaman can be the healer, if he’s pretty good at healing. At least Blackhoof managed the role.

Then 3 DPS. You won’t be trapping anything, or sheeping anything. Some adds management comes in handy, but that’s something the Tank can handle as well.

Someone activates the pumpkin outside the crypt. (There is no quest, per se. Everyone can summon him once a day. A party of five has five chances.) This summoner takes the candle to the mound of dirt in front of the crypt. That person will have the initial aggro from the Horseman.

Three phases here.

Grab the Horseman, it’s easy tank and spank for the first phase. Burn him down with your DPS. You basically kill him.

Alas, it’s not over. “First phase.”

Rather than die, his head comes off! And materializes into something you can target and kill a moment later. Do so. Target it and kill it.

While his head is off his body wanders around, as if scatter shotted by a hunter. But it’s not helpless as he’ll do the occasional whirlwinds.

What I did was stay near the body while the DPS took out the head.

Once the head is killed, the Horseman is restored and mounts up again. Phase 2. He’ll come right back to the Tank, as subvervient as a Barov Peasant.

Basically the same thing. But every now and then he’ll conflagulate someone. (Set them on fire.) Not really sure if it puts out too much damage. I’m not sure if the Tank gets hit. I don’t think so. It would seem that #2 on the Aggro list gets the fire treatment. He’s dead and his head pops off again.

Go find that head and kill it. I think it just flies around, not damaging anything. It’s the body that does the damage still.

Anyway, the head dead, he’ll remount and return to me, the Tank. The aggro list does not appear to get wiped between phases.

Now, this last phase, phase 3, adds a new element. At some stage he’ll fire off four or five pumpkins that land on the ground.

What I did was back him into the area of the pumpkins. The pumpkins sit there for a bit, then animate and become like stickmen or something. (I forget what they’re called. They’re the rare pet that might also drop for you.) Once these adds appear I’ll drop a Thunderclap and Commanding Shout. I want those adds on me. They don’t appear to do much damage. Occasionally one runs off to the Healer, and I’ll grab him and bring him back.

He’ll lose his head one last time. Kill that head and the fight is over and the adds vanish. Your bags will fill up with sickengly sweet pumpkin treats (automatically) and the Horseman is vanquished, at last, again.

Loot the Horseman’s remains, and hope the Loot Gods smile on you. If not, rinse and repeat. Pop a candy treat and run out of there.

Leave the instance and reset it. Then reenter and try another summons.

(Remember that you, the account, not the character, are limited to 5 dungeon resets in an hour. You’ll probably want each summons, and it might lock you out of other instances as well. It will lock you out of the Graveyard for a sixth attempt. Time your Horseman attempts with your raiding/instancing accordingly.)

One of the interesting aspects about the event is that it is do-able in a 10-man raid. Bring your friends and zerg him! Just watch out for the Conflag splash damage. With a crowd of melee, it can get hairy, but a decent healer or two should be able to keep the group up.

The loots drops for all, regardless of level. We’ve *started* the event with a 66. A 64 is too low; I haven’t seen it tested with a 65.

It can be a very fun guild event, with multiple runs, and people swapping in and out. We’ve had a couple of multi-hour parties, where the participants change out over time. The (in)frequency of the help drop does seem to cause the plate-wearers to cry, however.

I was pretty darn lucky getting the helmet myself. I was there with an Arms Warrior, and we helped him the next day trying again for it, and it didn’t drop for him. (And it’s a noticeable improvement over my Helmet of Second Sight that I got in Shadowmoon Valley. The same helm I see all the other warriors still wear before replacing it with an epic.)

Being in a raid with many other warriors would hurt ones chances for it.

Your tactics sound spot-on to me. It seems like the groups that have troubles are the ones where the pumpkins get a chance to clobber the healer, and TCing when they first show seems to be the best way to get’em to focus on the tank.

Think I was even luckier. I got me helm on my 16th run. I was with two other warriors and a pally when it dropped, and I was lucky enough to outroll them all with a 92. Haven’t seen it drop since.